


thermodynamic equilibrium

by FlipSpring



Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Aromantic, Aziraphale Has a Penis (Good Omens), Crowley Has A Vulva (Good Omens), Crowley Has a Praise Kink (Good Omens), Established Relationship, Friends With Benefits, Multi, Queerplatonic Relationships, alloaro, and oh yeah, but in a chill and fun way, if you cant get storebought alloaro representation homemade is fine, just a couple of dudes having a bang, porn with sidedish of character dev, rated E for teh sex, social agony! at the birthday party, sometimes they fuck (platonically), these 2 bastards cant even stop being bastards while having sex its deplorable
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-04
Updated: 2019-10-04
Packaged: 2020-11-23 03:21:50
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,927
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20885297
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FlipSpring/pseuds/FlipSpring
Summary: "Well, in any case. We are committed to each other in a certain loose sort of way," says Aziraphale, "Six thousand years with one constant source of mild aggravation and good company, he sort of grows on you through no real fault of his own.""Thanks, angel," says Crowley, "Real sweet-talker, you are."~a.k.a. Crowley is a heat-seeking snake & Aziraphale is the light through yonder window breaking





	thermodynamic equilibrium

**Author's Note:**

> im mourning the end of summer & i dont care if it makes me a basic bitch.
> 
> also catch me: smooshing together the aspects I like best from the book & tv version of the characters into a single pair of super-bastards: “now kiss”

The summer of Apocalypse is over.

Fall arrives, damp and chill. The cold wetness sucks away the heat from the very air. It is the season of turning up heaters, of Pumpkin Spice Lattes, of warm baked goods, of wool blankets, of all these things railing against the inexorable creep of winter.

Crowley hates the cold. The heat is quick to leave his extremities and slow to return. The cold tires him, a sort of bone-deep spiritual exhaustion that can't be filled by sleep. In his entirely objective and completely correct opinion, it was a debilitating mistake on the part of humankind to ever venture north of the Mediterranean Sea.

He books a flight to Santorini.

He spends a good week sleeping off the stress of England's Fall season on the bone-white rooftops, letting the sun burn sweetly down, letting the heat and light radiate within and without. He spends another week eating bitter-sweet-salty olives and drinking dark wine and wandering up and down around the infinite white walkways and stairwells.

He is in the middle of very important business: reclining on a sunny rooftop, drinking a colorful cocktail, and tossing olive pits down on the heads of unsuspecting passers-by, when his cell-phone rings.

The wonderful and slightly cursed thing about the modern era is that you can be intimately, infinitely connected, at all times, should you so choose.

He picks up, holds the phone to his ear with a shoulder, and carefully aims an olive pit at a sunburned tourist.

"What's up, Aziraphale?"

He launches the olive pit. It strikes the tourist square on the temple. The tourist reels back comically, dropping the phone they'd been using to take selfies.

"Hm," says Crowley, "No, I'm in Santorini."

The tourist picks up their phone in a panic, checks it over for damage, and soothes it like it is a newborn child. They then cast about, searching for whatever had struck them in the head.

Crowley de-stones another olive, and examines the spittle-encrusted pit in his hand.

"Yeah," he says. "Oh, honestly?"

There's a slight crick in his neck. He swaps the cellphone to his other shoulder. 

"No, _you_ should come _here_.... No. Fuck no. Listen, they've got those little wrap things you like... Right, right... Well, whatever they're called, they're better _here_, obviously, this is actual Greece."

He tosses the olive pit at random. It hits nobody. He leans back on the rooftop, takes another sip of a very alcoholic and very colorful cocktail.

"Mm." The sun is very warm, doubly so since he's wearing black from head to foot. His clothes burn wonderfully. And England is so stupid-cold, and will only get stupider-colder with every passing day. He'd half forgotten how nice it was to be somewhere that could actually get _hot_.

"Noooooo–"

Another sip of cocktail.

"But I don't want to."

Another sip, and then he drains the drink in one go.

_"Fine."_

He tosses the empty glass into the street. Miraculously, it doesn't shatter.

Crowley books a flight out of Santorini.

~

They drive to Tadfield. Crowley has the Bentley blowing hot air full blast, but it's not enough. It's never enough.

"I still don't see why we've got to go to a human birthday party," he says, "You know they have a birthday every single year, right? Every time you blink, they're celebrating another birthday. This sets a terrible precedent. Do you really want to become the sort of person who's expected to attend birthdays? You'll never have a free moment again in your life."

"We're _both_ attending," says Aziraphale, who is balancing a boxed apple pie in his lap with utmost care.

"Uhm, yeah, why do you think I'm so annoyed with you? Dragging me into this. I could be lying naked on a beach in Greece right now, pounding margaritas. I _would_ be, if you hadn't talked me into attending this stupid birthday party."

"Well, air all your complaints out now before we get there," says Aziraphale primly, "I don't want you griping the whole time at our hosts."

Crowley obliges, at length.

~

"Hi!" Anathema opens the door to her cottage. She grins, blindingly. Nobody, Crowley thinks, has any right to look so delighted when the weather report says it's 10 degrees Centigrade and overcast. "Thanks so much for coming to my birthday!"

"It's our pleasure, dear," says Aziraphale, like a liar. "You _must_ tell us how it was hiking Glyndwr’s Way."

"Oh, it wasn't that exciting, really," says Anathema, taking the pie from Aziraphale.

"Not exciting?" Aziraphale exclaims, and then steps through the threshold with the help of an insistent nudge from Crowley, "You walked a hundred-and-thirty-five miles all on your own and it wasn't that exciting? Perhaps you did it wrong."

"Well, I have a higher threshold for _exciting_, now, I suppose. It didn't even rain fish."

Crowley leaves them to their twattering and makes a beeline for the fireplace. He stands over the crackling flames, close enough to scorch.

"Get out of the hearth, Crowley," Aziraphale says, distantly, "You'll get ash on all her things."

Crowley very diplomatically refrains from pointing out that this is Anathema's fault for inviting him in the first place. He steps out of the hearth, and lets himself melt into a nearby armchair. An ashy footprint is left smudged on the carpeted floor, mysteriously.

"I'm afraid Fall always makes him a bit prickly," Aziraphale is saying, "It's all the cold and rain, you must forgive him."

"That's fine, that's fine." Their voices have moved into another room. "Vinnie! This is Aziraphale, he owns a bookshop in London, aren't you jealous? Aziraphale, meet Vinnie, she's a good friend of mine, we were both PhD candidates under the same professor..."

Crowley is settling in for a good warm powernap through an annoying social function, when someone knocks on the door. He ignores it. Someone knocks again. He cracks open an eye and snaps his fingers.

The door unlocks itself, and a human steps through.

The human was a forgettable sort of background-character type. Glasses, nondescript, posture sort of hunched in a way that suggested they didn't want to be seen. Crowley wouldn't have given them a second glance, except the faces of all the players in the failed Armageddon that summer had been seared into his memory.

The human spots him, and starts to come over, all signs pointing towards them starting up some unbearable chitchat.

“Hi,” says the human, stopping in front of him. “You were… at the apocanopes, right?”

“The what now?”

“Oh, sorry,” says the human, “Anathema and I always call it the Apoca-nopes, you know, like the Apocalypse, but _nope?”_

“That’s atrocious,” says Crowley, still slouched in the armchair.

The human chuckles, a bit nervously. “Well, that’s true. Um. Say, I’m sorry, but I don’t actually remember your name, or if we’ve even been properly–”

"Oi, fuck off," says Crowley, who had also completely forgotten this human’s name, but who had a good excuse, which was that he was six thousand something years old and couldn't be bothered to remember the names of every single human being that stumbled awkwardly across his path.

"Sorry,” says the human, taking a step back, looking panicked now, “I’m so terrible with names.”

"Get better, then,” says Crowley. He hauls himself to his feet and beats a hasty retreat to the kitchen, where he circles round the table, picking up three deviled eggs and swallowing them down in quick succession. Aziraphale was chatting animatedly with Vinnie and some other nameless human about some boring literature thing.

He leans into Aziraphale's ear, and whispers, much louder than necessary, _"How long do we have to stay here in this nightmare pit of a pity party?"_

Aziraphale glares at him. Crowley glares back. Aziraphale reflects the glare with double the force. Crowley shrinks back in defeat, and circles the kitchen table again for another handful of eggs, before retreating out the back door. He would've taken the front door, but there were a couple more presumed friends, family, or Apocalypse-acquaintances of Anathema's ringing the front doorbell.

He stands on the back step, looking out at the wet, drizzly garden. His hands and nose are ice-cold already, with the rest of his body hurrying to follow suit. In his rush to escape the stifling social atmosphere inside the house he'd completely forgotten about the horror of the outdoors.

Crowley feels a teeny tiny twinge of guilt for being an unabashed asshole at the _Apocanopes_ human, and wonders if he should go back inside and apologize. But instead of doing that, he squishes two halves of deviled egg together and pops the whole thing in his mouth. He swallows it down, and watches as the drizzle works its way into a downpour. 

Anathema's garden is a green and wild thing. Most of the plants are of edible varieties, with some poisonous and flowering and weedy ones filling in the gaps. Ungoverned, unruly, undisciplined, free and unafraid. They were lashed back and forth by the wind and rain, in turns ruffled and reveling. 

He thinks of the first storm, all the way back in Eden. It hadn't been so cold, back then. But all rainstorms share a certain spirit.

He tucks his icy hands into his pockets, but it doesn’t really help. It just makes his upper thighs cold.

Evening sets in, the darkness creeping up around the corners. Nobody was going to come outside to get him. Which was. Good and bad.

He opens Anathema's back door with a stiff hand, and steps back inside. The foodstuffs on the table were mostly obliterated. A chorus of Happy Birthday Chanting echoes from the living room. Crowley lurks in the doorway, and watches them sing, watches the tiny flickering candlelights, watches the toothy grins and the clapping.

Aziraphale comes over after the Birthday Chants, holding a plate with two slices of cake. He offers the plate to Crowley, who shakes his head.

"You're in a mood," observes Aziraphale, and takes a fork to the cake.

Crowley shrugs.

"Is it just the weather, or something else?"

Crowley shrugs again. He didn't really know how to articulate it. Maybe it would come to him later, the words he needed to describe this feeling of barbed-wire nostalgia, of an inescapable eternity, of flame and ice on his skin — two sensations that could be the same in opposite ways. Maybe not. Right now he didn't know.

"Is it the cyclical passage of time?" Aziraphale asks, "An uncertain future? The past, redefined?"

"Angel," Crowley says, quietly, "You're very good at guessing my innermost thoughts and feelings and all, but please don't. Not right now."

"Hmm," says Aziraphale, through a mouthful of cake. He swallows. "Mm. I have an idea, but you won't like it."

"By all means, then," Crowley says, airily, "hit me."

"All these millenia, and I've never seen the Northern Lights."

Crowley groans, and doubles over as though he'd been punched in the gut. "_Angel_. You wound me. No."

"You're making a scene, dear."

Crowley straightens back up. "If you want to see the Northern _bloody_ Lights you're on your own. Be my guest! I'm sure they look pretty darn cool. I'm sure you'll love them! But I am not in a _million_ years—"

"Would you come with me?"

Crowley groans again, dramatically buckling at the knees, sagging his entire body down by about a foot. "You _know_ I hate the cold— it's bad enough we live in _London_—“

"You love London, shut up," says Aziraphale. He had a smirk playing around his lips.

"—wettest of them all, bloody freezing three quarters of the year, and you want to take me to see the _Northern Lights_, we might as well pack up and move to Uranus next, I am _not_ going to— going to—"

"Iceland."

"—Iceland! They've got so much ice there they named the entire bloody country after it!"

"I've seen the Northern Lights," says Anathema, walking up with a plate of cake, "It's beautiful. You absolutely _must_ do it. I can't believe you two haven't yet, of all people."

Crowley groans, and half-covers his face with a still-chilly hand. "_God._ Fuck you, God."

Aziraphale gestures at Anathema. "Look! She's only twenty years old and _she's_ seen the Northern Lights."

"I wanted to see them before the world ended this past summer," says Anathema conversationally, "I was just hedging my bets, really. And now I get to live the rest of my life. Bonus."

"_Twenty?_" Crowley asks, distractedly, taking his hand away from his face. "_Twenty?_ I've got bobby pins older than you, and those buggers jump ship as soon as they see a _sliver_ of a window of opportunity. Fucks sake..."

Aziraphale nods. "You see? Twenty, _and_ she's got a PhD, _and_ a house, _and_ she's seen the Northern Lights. That's a human that knows how to live."

"I mean, it very much helps to be born rich, with a book of prophecy written in detail about your life," says Anathema, somberly, "But money’s not an issue for you two, is it?"

"I should think not," says Aziraphale.

"Mhm," says Anathema, taking another bite of cake. "Mm. Okay. I've got a question for you guys, and go ahead and tell me to buzz off and mind my own business if it's not my place to ask. But are you two, like," she wiggles the fingers of one hand at them, "_together?_"

"Oh, honestly," Crowley groans. "Angel, this is your fault for making friends. We've overstayed, and the humans are asking personal questions now."

"I'm just one human," says Anathema, "I mean, you call him _angel_–"

"He's actually an actual angel," Crowley defends.

"And _you_ call him _my dear_–"

"He calls everyone _my dear_," Crowley says. Aziraphale is smiling. Crowley hates that Aziraphale is smiling.

Anathema takes another bite of cake, and stares between the two of them, meaningfully.

"Well, we are and we aren't," says Aziraphale, and _fucking hell_ apparently Anathema McHumanpants Device is a close enough friend to bother having this conversation with, so that's another fifty years of human birthday parties forcibly blocked out on Crowley's calendar, shit. "It's rather difficult to explain to mortals, I'm afraid. But we've known each other a long time. You could say we're good friends."

"You could say we're good enemies," says Crowley.

Aziraphale hums. "Yes, quite. But neither of us report to Head Office anymore. The affiliations had been mostly meaningless trappings since before Armageddon–"

"Oh, that's rich, angel. I seem to recall you waiting 'til the last possible second to break off with Heaven–"

"Well, even so–"

"Took you long enough to see I was right, which I am, _always_–"

Aziraphale cut himself another corner of birthday cake, and said, simply, "Geneva."

"Oi, would you shut _up_ about Geneva, I thought we'd agreed to stop bringing up Geneva!"

Aziraphale raised his eyebrows. "I would never agree to that, it's far too useful in arguments."

"...Sweet Jesus," says Anathema.

Crowley raises two index fingers imperiously. "Don't! Anathema, do _not_ bring up Jesus."

She cracks a smile.

"Well, in any case. We are committed to each other in a certain loose sort of way," says Aziraphale, "Six thousand years with one constant source of mild aggravation and good company, he sort of grows on you through no real fault of his own."

"Thanks, angel," says Crowley, "Real sweet-talker, you are."

Anathema's smile widens. "So, what is this, like, a queerplatonic relationship?"

"Queer-platonic?" Aziraphale rolls the word around his mouth as though savoring a new and delectable treat. "What a lovely word. I must look it up."

Crowley wasn't so sure of the word. Queer? Yeah probably. Platonic? Pretty much, if you counted the occasional Fuck Session as platonic. Which it kind of was. There wasn't anything spiritually transcendent about the sex, really. It wasn't some grand declaration of love, the way humans often seemed to romanticize.

Crowley gave Aziraphale a sidelong glance. Love? Did he _love_ Aziraphale? He'd asked himself this question before. And, as always, the question dug uncomfortable barbs into his spine. He knew for sure he _liked_ Aziraphale. So maybe he did sort of love Aziraphale, in a lazy, aimless sort of way. It certainly wasn’t the way humans often did, with soul-deep obsession and chocolates and serenades. Well. He did bring Aziraphale chocolates sometimes, but not like _that_. Aziraphale just really liked chocolates.

But his relationship with the angel was deeper and broader than mortal experience could encompass, even if it wasn’t really the blazingly single-minded devotion of that thing called _love_.

Anyway, he was actually still waiting on articulating how exactly he felt about Aziraphale, a question whose answer he probably _could_ try to seek out, only he couldn't really be bothered. And Aziraphale never aired any complaints about their relationship, aside from stupid surface stuff like _'For The Love Of God You're Driving One Hundred Miles Per Hour Over The Posted Speed Limit, CROWLEY!'_

Whatever they were, it was fine. 

What was it about humans and their obsession with categorizing the ineffable? _Queerplatonic._ Holy shit.

"Aziraphale," he says, trying (and failing) to not pitch his voice like a cranky toddler, "can we go? _Puh-lease?_ See? I said please and everything."

"Yes, I'm getting rather tired of all these people as well," says Aziraphale. And then he appeared to realize he'd said that out loud. "Of course, I mean, _Anathema_, your party was _lovely_, thank you so much for the invitation. Wouldn't miss it for the world."

"Laying it on a bit thick, aren't you," Crowley comments.

"Yeah, sure," says Anathema good-naturedly, and gives a little wave, "Newt! Come say goodbye."

Out of nowhere, the not-so-nameless _Apocanopes_ human materializes. Despite being taller than Anathema, they shrink back in her shadow.

“Fuck,” says Crowley, and likewise tries to shrink behind Aziraphale. Aziraphale won’t let him, catching him by the ribs with one hand and pushing him back to stand firmly at his side.

“What is this nonsense?” Aziraphale asks him, “_Crowley._ Have you done something nefarious? I thought you were mostly past that sort of thing.”

Crowley is feeling the jaws of Social Awkwardity close around him.

“_Newt_,” he says, scathingly, “Really? Is that _really_ your name?”

“Er,” says Newt.

“Crowley!” says Aziraphale.

“Fuck!” says Crowley. 

Everyone is staring at Crowley with varying degrees of bewilderment, reproach, and amusement. He lets out a heavy breath. “Sorry. Uh. I was being a dick. To Newt. Earlier. And also just now. Sorry, Newt.”

“Oh, is that all?” says Aziraphale, with an air of relief.

“It’s fine,” says Newt, nervously.

“Not really,” says Crowley, and then blurts out, “I forgot your name too, so _shut up_.”

“You're so funny,” says Anathema. Crowley glares at her. The four of them shuffle through the living room to the front door like some kind of eight-legged socialization nightmare.

Anathema opens the door for them. “Anyway! Thanks for coming to my birthday party, and thank you for the pie, I loved it. Drive home safe. And have fun in Iceland!”

Crowley points at her. "No! I'm not going to bloody fucking _Iceland_ to freeze my tits off waiting for the sky to explode into phantasmagoria. I'm not doing it. That's final!"

“_Crowley_,” says Aziraphale, exasperatedly, and drags him to the car by the elbow.

~

Crowley drove them back to London, and stopped in front of the bookstore. 

"See you round," said Crowley.

Aziraphale popped the car's door handle, letting in a seepage of chill air. He paused.

"Are you heading back down to Santorini?" he asked.

"I might need go to the Sahara to recover from all this talk of Iceland," said Crowley, "Now get out, you're letting the cold in."

Aziraphale was staring at him, his eyes inhumanly luminous in the half-light of street-lamps filtered through the wet windshield.

"Would you like to come in for a night-cap?" he asked.

Crowley stared, mouth agape, and then struck the steering wheel with one hand. "If you think you're going to talk me into going to Iceland by dangling _sex_ in front of me, you've got another thing coming."

Aziraphale's eyes widened innocently, "Oh, _do_ I?"

He opened the Bentley door fully, letting in a blast of chilly Fall air. He leaned down, one arm braced on the roof of the car. "Last call for that nightcap," he said.

"Just shut the damned door, Aziraphale," said Crowley.

"As you like, my dear," said Aziraphale cheerfully, and shut the door. Crowley watched him walk across the street, watched him unlock the bookstore, watched him turn and wave goodbye.

It had been a long time since Crowley'd had sex with anyone. One decade at least. Probably closer to two. And it was such a chilly night to be going home, alone, to an empty flat with an unreliable heating system, and he knew from personal experience that Aziraphale's body ran hot...

"_Bastard_," Crowley muttered, and killed the engine, and followed Aziraphale into his bookshop.

“Red or white?” Aziraphale asked.

“Red,” said Crowley, flopping down on the couch in Aziraphale’s back room and pulling up the fluffy full-size comforter Aziraphale kept there.

Aziraphale poured out two glasses of Red and brought them over, sitting next to Crowley on the couch. The back room was oppressively warm (or would have been to most people) and furthermore it was significantly warmer than Aziraphale usually kept it.

“You _really_ do want to see those Northern Lights, don’t you,” said Crowley heavily, and sipped from the wine glass in his hand.

“Well, yes,” Aziraphale admitted, swirling his own glass of Red. “And you don’t have to go if you truly don’t want to. I’d just much prefer to share the experience with you.”

“Hm,” said Crowley, sipping, “you’re a real sap, you know that?”

“We could find you the biggest, warmest coat,” Aziraphale suggested.

“Ugh,” said Crowley, “that’s another thing about the cold. The warmest coats are the ugliest.”

Aziraphale giggled, and drained his wine in one long draught, and then pulled Crowley’s face to his own.

Aziraphale’s mouth was searingly hot and tasted like wine, slick-sweet and a little acidic. Crowley kissed into it, feeling at once like he was drowning, and dying of thirst. He drew a hand up around Aziraphale’s shoulders, let it rest around the back of his neck, feeling Aziraphale’s pulse with his thumb, a hard, steady rhythm just starting to pick up speed.

They kissed for so long that had they been human, they’d probably have passed out for want of air. Crowley finally pulled back, gasping, his hand still on Aziraphale’s neck, still tracing that burning-hot pulse.

“One sec,” Crowley panted, “just a sec. Look. You better not fuck me if, if, if the _only_ reason you’re doing it is to convince me to go to Iceland, because, uhm, for one thing, it might actually _work_, and for another thing—”

“Dear, do shut up,” said Aziraphale, and pulled Crowley back closer, and was kissing him again.

“Mmph!”

Aziraphale kissed him breathless again, and then started trailing kissed down his jaw, onto his neck, sucking hard at the column of his throat.

“_Ohhh_ fuck,” said Crowley, and spilled half the glass of wine he was still clutching in his hand. “Oops. Shit.”

“Put that down before you make a mess,” said Aziraphale, pulling away and pulling the glass from Crowley’s hand.

“Too late,” grinned Crowley, leaning back against the sofa and its blankets. “But, uh, I’m _serious_, angel, the whole sex-as-a-transaction-thing really doesn’t work for me...”

He watched Aziraphale drink some of the wine, and then set the rest safely out of reach.

“This is a good enough excuse as any for sex, isn’t it?” Aziraphale asked.

“Wait,” said Crowley. His neck prickled with nervousness. “Why do you think we need an excuse? We don’t need an excuse, do we?”

“Mm, well, maybe you do have a point there.”

“Oh boy, let me write down the date and time,” said Crowley, excitedly, and pretended to scrawl an exaggerated note onto his palm, “He’s conceded a point!”

“Hush,” said Aziraphale. He was looking at Crowley intensely, his head tipped slightly to the side. “You’re not reading into this, are you? You always overthink things.”

“No, I think things the _correct_ amount,” Crowley countered, “And sex can make things weird. Remember? The thirteen fifties? You were all _‘dearie me we’d best get married, forsoothe.'_”

Aziraphale snorted. “Oh Good Lord, I’d completely forgotten that whole ordeal. We actually did get married, didn't we.”

Crowley jabbed a finger at him. “You see?”

“Crowley,” said Aziraphale, “How about this. I won’t bring up Iceland again tonight, if you’d rather I not. But I think it might be fun.”

Crowley narrowed his eyes. “What do you mean, fun?” 

“Well,” Aziraphale shrugged. His eyes were glittering. “You know how it can be when we get competitive.”

Crowley felt a jolt that started in his spine and ended in his groin. “Ah,” he said, stupidly.

“So?” Aziraphale prompted.

“Alright, fine,” Crowley conceded, “Convince me about those _stupid_ Lights, I guess. First one to climax is the loser.”

And Crowley pounced forward, pushing Aziraphale against the sofa, pressing open-mouthed kisses against his neck, pressing his hand in under the edge of Aziraphale’s pants.

Aziraphale moaned and shuddered under him as Crowley palmed Aziraphale’s cock and gave it a few teasing strokes, his other hand unbuttoning Aziraphale’s infinite goddamned buttons, rucking up his shirt so that he could touch the warm, gently-furred expanse of his chest.

“Come on, angel,” Crowley whispered, kissing Aziraphale hard enough to bruise, a miracle spent on slicking his hand with lube as he stroked Aziraphale’s cock at an unforgiving pace.

The angel gasped, cried out, and Crowley thought he’d won, but then Aziraphale snapped his eyes open, gripping Crowley hard by the shoulders, twisting them both so that they rolled off the couch.

Crowley’s back hit the floor first, knocking the air from his lungs and disorienting him for the split second Aziraphale needed to unbutton his pants and pull them roughly down.

“Oh fu-UU—CK,” Crowley yelped, as Aziraphale’s hot, wet mouth descended upon him.

Crowley tried to kick free, but Aziraphale was lying on his legs, both hands holding down his hips, alternately licking into him and sucking on his clit, and the _sounds_ he was making, they were absolutely obscene, they were the exact same sounds he made when he was tucking into a spread of coffee and tiramisu at the Ritz— and oh, _fuck_, Crowley couldn’t take much more of this, Aziraphale was giving it all he had and if this went on much longer he’d be pushed _forcibly_ over the edge—

Aziraphale gave a particularly rough suck and _moaned_, loudly, and the feeling of it was too much, too fast, a jagged shard of pleasure straight up Crowley’s spine. 

“_Aaah!_ No-no-no-noooo _fuck!_” Crowley writhed desperately, fighting back orgasm with heroic effort, his arms scrambling for purchase against the carpeted floor.

Aziraphale paused his onslaught, looked up, his lips red and damp. “Oh, sorry. Did we pick a safeword?”

“Are, are, are you sssserious right now?” Crowley demanded, half-sitting, feeling like jello trying to hold itself up with pure willpower. If he could just keep Aziraphale talking, maybe... He grabbed a pillow off the couch, and smacked Aziraphale in the face with it.

Aziraphale frowned, his hair disheveled by the pillow. “That’s not very sporting of you.”

Crowley brandished the pillow again, but half-heartedly. “What’s unsportsmanlike is you lying on my legs!”

“How about we use the same safeword as last time?”

“That was, that was so long ago, I don’t remember,” said Crowley, like a liar.

They glared at each other, neither wanting to utter the safeword and risk ending the whole affair.

“I’ll spell it out then. S-A-R—” Aziraphale started, and then Crowley was struck by an idea.

He twisted a foot, trapped though it was, and worked it between Aziraphale’s legs.

“—S-P-A-R—”

He pressed his foot sharply up.

Aziraphale stumbled over the next letter, “—ah!”

“Sorry, What was that?” Crowley asked, and pressed up again.

Aziraphale groaned, his hips grinding involuntarily against Crowley’s foot, “Crowley! Please stop and let me finish.”

“Gladly,” said Crowley, and grabbed a fistful of Aziraphale’s hair, pulling gentle, but steady. Aziraphale, forgetting himself, followed Crowley’s lead, crawling up to meet him. 

Aziraphale’s whole body felt like the sun, soft and blazing, radiating heat. Crowley ran a hand over his chest, then his back as they kissed, fingernails scraping gently over skin, and Aziraphale shivered in his arms.

“Aziraphale,” Crowley hissed, kissing into his open, hungering mouth, and then moving his attention to Aziraphale’s ear. He sucked Aziraphale’s earlobe into his mouth, bit it gently, and heard Aziraphale try, then fail to bite back a whimper. “Do you know you’re _ssublime?_”

Crowley kicked off his pants, roughly, and bracketed his legs around Aziraphale’s hips. He had a hand guiding Aziraphale’s cock, had his focus on Aziraphale’s slightly dazed eyes. He was a little punch-drunk, himself. He was high on this feeling, and still determined to win. He wanted all of Aziraphale’s heat, all around him and within him.

He pulled Aziraphale home.

Aziraphale made a noise like he’d been struck, and then he started to move his hips, shallow little thrusts that pressed Crowley against the floor, pressed soft sounds out of Crowley's throat.

Crowley let his eyes fall shut. He felt like he was sunbathing, only the edge of it was just a little sharp, a little sparkly. “You feel so good, Aziraphale,” he hissed, “so— _ah!_ So, so, so good.”

He could go like this for a while, could drive Aziraphale over the edge first, he was sure of it.

He pulled Aziraphale closer to his chest, so that he could feel their skin drag and pull, the warmth of it. “Fuck,” he whispered, flicked his tongue, tasted the sweat-salt-sweetness of Aziraphale's skin, “yes, yes, _please,_ yes—”

“Crowley,” Aziraphale was murmuring into his neck, “You’re so _lovely_ like this.”

Oh. Oh no.

Aziraphale snapped his hips harder, pushing a breathless _Ah!_ from Crowley's lungs. A determined gleam had entered Aziraphale's eye. He said, softly, earnestly, “You’re wonderful. You’re the sweetest, the, _ohh,_ the kindest, cleverest—”

“_Aaahhh— fuck!_ Fuck, shut up!” Crowley panted, and tried to cover Aziraphale’s mouth with his hand, but Aziraphale caught his wrist and pinned it to the floor.

“—Nicest person I know—”

“Nnnnnnggggghhh!” Crowley was rapidly losing control of the situation. He felt like a champagne bottle being shook up, like a lit fuse on a barrel of gunpowder.

“You take my cock so _beautifully_,” Aziraphale was saying. Holy _shit_. Crowley frantically tried to count prime numbers in his head, but he couldn’t even think straight enough to do it. Aziraphale continued to fuck into him, steady, unwavering, a relentless wave of moving heat, and he reached up with his free hand towards Crowley's glasses, "Won't you, _hnn_, let me, let me see those lovely, _ah_-eyes of yours, Crowley..?"

Crowley whined, brokenly, staring up at Aziraphale, transfixed, as the angel pulled his glasses away, and then they were looking into each other, unobstructed, and Crowley felt as though he were falling into Aziraphale’s eyes that were like a pair of dark, brilliant suns. Aziraphale snapped his hips again, hard. "_Come_ for me now will you? Please, dear?”

“_Aaargh_— ah! Oh _fuck_,” Crowley hissed, and came, his skull falling back against the floor, his orgasm blooming all the way down to his toes like a warm tide of spring.

Aziraphale followed soon after.

They lay there for a while, catching their breath. And then Aziraphale pulled carefully out and lay down next to Crowley, who curled up close to his warmth.

“I almost had you,” said Crowley, using his foot to pull the blanket off the couch and onto them.

“Several times,” Aziraphale agreed. “If you’d had a cock I’d have finished you sooner.”

“Excuse you?” Crowley demanded, indignant.

“You orgasm near-instantly when I give you fellatio. By which I mean. You're so very sensitive.”

Crowley sputtered. “First of all, _NOT_ true. That’s slander. That’s _defamation_! I could sue you, angel.”

Aziraphale yawned. “Well, prove me wrong next time. In Iceland, maybe.”

Crowley groaned. “Oh, _shit_.”

“You really don’t have to come with me if you'd prefer not to..."

“No, no, I will. Bastard.”

“Serpent,” said Aziraphale, fondly.

~

“I regret everything. I regret God, and I regret God forming me from the firmaments, I regret God forming the _Earth_ from the firmaments, I regret meeting you, I regret befriending you—”

“Crowley, we haven’t even landed yet.”

Crowley scowled, and pointed out the airplane window. "Do you see that down there? It’s snow. The water died and underwent rigor-mortis. The whole blasted island is covered with the vast fallen corpse of _water_.”

“I'm sorry about him,” said Aziraphale to the woman sitting next to him. The woman in question was clutching an airsickness bag and appeared completely unaware of her surroundings.

Keflavík's International Airport, once a US military airbase built for the purposes of World War, was now a proud pillar of Icelandic society, delivering millions of tourists each year (and more importantly, their tourist cash).

This year, two of those tourists were an angel and demon. Or, at least, ex-angel and ex-demon.

Crowley had spent essentially all his Complaining Energy on the flight over, and had settled into what he seemed to think was a dignified sullen silence. They checked in at the hotel in Reykjavík, and then went downtown to a café for tea and cakes. Aziraphale pulled the door open for Crowley, letting free a burst of sweet, warm air laden with the smell of baked goods and coffee.

Aziraphale watched Crowley peel out of his enormous coat and flop bonelessly into the café chair. He sensed some Complaining Energy had built up again.

"Scone?" Aziraphale offered, in an effort to head it off.

"No thanks," said Crowley, "Angel, it's even _colder_ than I thought it would be."

"Oh, pish-posh," said Aziraphale, and took a sip of tea, "It's not even that much colder here than it is back home."

"Uh, yes it is? At least back home isn't actively _freezing!_"

"It's two degrees right now, that's not technically freezing," said Aziraphale, glancing out the glass window of the café at the outdoors. It was mid-afternoon, but the light was already starting to fade a little, "Shame the forecast has a storm on for tonight, we won't be able to go out."

"Yeah, shame," said Crowley sarcastically, tipping back in his chair a bit.

Aziraphale looked back at him, "Don't you think it's rather beautiful here?"

Crowley ran a hand over his face, tipping his chair back forward with a thud. "Please, angel. _Please_ don't decide that this is the place you want to pack up and move to after, what, four, five hundred years parked in London? I'd have to somehow think up some separate personal reason to come join you on this froze-forsaken rock, and _that_ defies all stretches of the imagination."

Aziraphale smiled at him, achingly fond of this ancient serpent and all his well-meaning devilry. "You're sweet."

Crowley emitted a pained gurgling sound, and groped for a scone. He stuffed the whole thing in his mouth, and swallowed it down.

They ate and drank in silence for a while. When they ran out, Aziraphale got up and ordered another round of tea and pastries.

"I think I rather like the cold," Aziraphale admitted, over his nth cup of tea.

"Hm?" Crowley asked, idly. He was playing with his phone, thumbs tapping. Perhaps it was that _Snake_ game. That would be a little on the nose, though. Even if Crowley had been the one to popularize it in the first place.

"I don't just like the coziness of being wrapped up away from the cold, you understand," Aziraphale said, "And it's not that heat disagrees with me, though that's certainly part of it. I like the actual cold, itself."

Crowley looked up, eyes unreadable from behind his glasses, but mouth slanted in a somewhat disgusted sort of way.

"It's like the Heat Death," Aziraphale said, softly. "It's the perfect stillness of the universe, before everything was made, and after everything's been undone. Cold is a _memento mori_. I think it’s an important reminder to have, for someone who is functionally immortal. But it’s rather silly, I suppose."

"No," said Crowley, dead-seriously, "It's not silly. I sort of see what you mean, even though I'd honestly rather have my eyes pulled out by the optic nerve than bear the cold."

"Oh goodness, that's quite bad," said Aziraphale.

"I'm exaggerating," Crowley said. He paused, and added. "A little."

"And yet you came with me anyway," said Aziraphale.

"Don't make this weird. You're overthinking it," said Crowley, gruffly, and turned to look back down at his phone.

"I suppose it could also be my being made of Holy Flame," Aziraphale mused, "It's soothing, to be able to let some of that heat pour out, you know?"

"Can't relate," said Crowley.

"It's like this," said Aziraphale, "Imagine you're unbearably hot–"

"Impossible, but go on."

"Except it's not unbearable, really–"

"Okay."

"Except you don't _know_ that you're hot, until one day you find an oasis in the desert, the green life welling up around this one single spring of water. The air that was dry and arid is now wet with the breathing of the plants around you, the fruits and the birds, so colorful, colors you've never known existed–"

He trailed off. Crowley was looking at him again.

Aziraphale cleared his throat. "So you've been walking through the heat of the desert for who-knows how long, nothing but sand and sun in every direction, and you come to this living, beautiful oasis, and you walk deep into it, and right in the center you find the spring, and the water pouring out of it, crystal-clear, and when you touch it, it's _cold_."

His breath catches on the word, involuntarily. "It's _cold_, and you've never known cold before. It's ice-cold and the most refreshing thing you've ever experienced, you want to fall into it, breathe it, let it overtake you completely."

Crowley's staring at him, his jaw is slightly agape. He snaps it shut.

"Erm. I guess," he said a little roughly, "That's the difference with you and me regarding, erm, _temperatures_. You're like, made of heat and light, you never run out of it."

"Yes, exactly," said Aziraphale, beaming. "You _do_ understand."

"But also," Crowley pointed out, "If there were no sunlight in your Eden, there'd be no plants or life at all."

Aziraphale blinked. "Well, that's true. I suppose the garden needs both."

"Oh, I don't know about that," said Crowley, "The garden needs _water_, sure, but there's no real reason the water needs to be cold."

"But I like the cold," said Aziraphale, sounding only a little petulant. "Weren't you listening? And, and, by your logic, there's no reason the sunlight needs to be hot."

At that, Crowley shuddered visibly. "Angel, you should write a horror novel. _Cripes._ The things you say sometimes. _Cold sunlight_. Fuck."

"Cold sunlight," Aziraphale marveled, "I love it."

Crowley scrunched his nose with disgust. "You're giving me the creeps."

Aziraphale smiled, and laid his hand down on the table between them, palm-up. He beckoned, slightly. Crowley stared down at Aziraphale's hand for a bit, and then slowly stretched his own hand out, allowed Aziraphale to interlace their fingers together, hot and cold.

"Thank you for coming with me," Aziraphale said.

"I only did it so you’d owe me a big one," Crowley responded. Aziraphale was quite certain this was a lie.

~

The winter storms came and went for several days and nights. The two of them idled away the time at various shops and restaurants, and one day Aziraphale even succeeded in luring Crowley out to Iceland's most active volcano, rumored by the locals to be a Gateway of Hell. It mostly just turned out to be a big mountain, and there wasn't anything particularly Hellish about it, all told, but it made for a good trip.

And then they started going out to Þingvellir, waiting all through the deep dark night, weathering the occasional wind and sleet (and Crowley's loud complaining), waiting for the lights to grace themselves upon the heavens.

On the seventh night of staking out the night, the sky was as cold and clear as you could ask for it to be. Aziraphale stood, silent, watching the stars pour out their cold starlight down upon the cold Earth.

Crowley stood close to him, bundled up in twice as many layers and bouncing slightly in place, shifting from one foot to the other.

"Look," Crowley said, suddenly, and Aziraphale looked. He spotted a faint, greenish flicker upon the horizon, and gasped, his breath puffing out of him as hot vapor sucked into the icy night.

They watched as the lights grew, and danced, green and blue and purple, twisting sinuous across the entire sky, a glowing river stretching from one edge of the Earth to the other. The lights looked like they ought to be accompanied by some crescendo of classical music, but they were completely silent. Everything was completely silent. The aurora wove in and around itself, spectacular and soft, cold and light.

Aziraphale looked over at Crowley, and saw that he'd lifted his sunglasses away from his eyes, pulled some of the scarves away from his face, and his eyes were flickering with the reflection of the sun's plasma bursting into color against the magnetic sky.

**Author's Note:**

> meta notes:  
1\. i literally flipped a coin for crowley's junk cuz i couldn't decide. i used justflipacoin.com, because flipping a real life coin holds the slim possibility of the coin landing on its Edge, and if that’d happened I’d have had to do Research  
2\. the observant reader will notice that this fic shifts tense partway thru. this is a subtle nod to the fact that I Felt Like It.  
3\. apparently it's canon that anathema is 19-20 and has a PhD? Horrifying.  
4\. crowley describes cold as seeping in. aziraphale describes heat as spilling out. only one of them is scientifically correct. spiritually tho?  
5\. perhaps the pointedly platonic portrayal of the Ineffable Bastards is objectionable to you? oh well. 2 bad. deal w it.
> 
> thanks 4 reading, nerd


End file.
